


lovve gimme lovve

by Laylah



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Adventure, Gen, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-30
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 09:20:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>lovve gimme lovve gimme lovve i don't need it<br/>but i'll take wwhat i wwant from your vvascular pump an i'll keep it</i><br/>--Troll Party Poison</p>
<p>A Boy's Own Adventure In The Wasteland, In Which He Discovers That Alien Invaders May Not Be So Bad After All.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the wasteland

_What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow  
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,  
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only  
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,  
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,  
And the dry stone no sound of water._  
—Taylor Swift

Traveling is a pretty big deal these days—the domes are still safe and all, but you can run into just about _anything_ in the wastelands between them. John can count at least three different sub-genres of movies about how things can go wrong when you leave your own dome and try to get to someone else's. (It seems dumb that they're all so far apart, really. Rose and the history feeds both say it's because they were built around cities that were already there when people started to need the domes in the first place.)

But John is growing up! And he's been saving his money from his part-time job, and school is out for the summer, and after some Serious Man-to-Man Talk, his dad has agreed to let him take a trip, by himself, all the way down to Heat City to meet his best friend in real life. He's been talking with Dave for something like forever in internet years, some of it in video chats so he knows Dave isn't secretly a creepy old ax murderer dude, and they've sent each other presents for their birthdays a few times now (Dave swears his presents were ironic, but John believes the word he was looking for was "awesome"). So this year John is upping the ante and sending _himself_ down to Heat City for Dave's birthday.

The trip from the Waterdome to Heat City takes three days by transit skiff, with a refueling stop at Mile High. Before the war apparently people would just fly, and that only took a few hours, maybe half a day at the worst. But now, between the leftover auto-targeting missile systems and the invaders' flying combat drones, traveling anywhere by air is outrageously dangerous. Even if John could somehow win the lottery and afford to hire a pilot, he's pretty sure his dad would never go for that. And honestly John wouldn't blame him. Much.

So he buys one of the few passenger spots on a regular transit skiff that makes the run south, carrying supplies from one dome to another. He packs his pajamas and his toothbrush and a few changes of clothes. He messages Dave approximately _eighteen thousand times_ the day before he leaves (and Jade and Rose only slightly less than that) because this is so exciting he can't stand it.

The skiffport itself isn't very exciting. It's more sort of...dingy and bluh. Everything is made of plastic that looks like it was probably supposed to be white, but it's turned kind of grody nicotine brown in most places. The guys running the machines to load and unload cargo from the skiffs are grouchy. There's _nobody_ hanging around who looks like a dashing roguish antihero or down-on-his-luck drifter with a heart of gold. It sort of looks like the trip part of this trip is shaping up to be less awesome than he hoped. Even the skiff itself looks kind of drab, this flattened tube painted in shades of brown that are probably meant to be camouflage but actually just look boring.

He gets to sit by the window in the skiff, at least! The windows are pretty tiny and the glass is really thick, because solar radiation levels outside the dome are awful and sadly just lead to cancer instead of super powers. But it's a window, and he'll be able to see bits of the wasteland as they skim through.

The skiff's engine has a quiet, whirring hum as it revs up. John sits on his hands to try to keep himself from fidgeting in excitement. It only sort of works. They slip through the airlock sequence, each door rumbling and shuddering to let them through, and then they pass the final one and dim filtered light spills through the window and they are _outside the dome_ , which means they are _in the wasteland_. John might squeak a little. Only a little, though.

Staring out the window with his nose pressed to the glass remains cool for...a while! It's kind of amazing to see the way the wasteland just goes _on_ like that, to see how quickly it starts and how total it is. Right near the Waterdome there's still a little bit of sludgy swampland, but by the time they've traveled even a couple of miles it's just crackly dry dirt and drifts of sand, with spindly trees and skeletons poking out of the ground sometimes. Super creepy. There's stuff that lives out there, though, even now. Jade sends him links to documentary videos and science articles all the time, stories about how animals are changing thanks to the radiation. It's kind of sad but also kind of really cool.

There's also supposed to be trolls, of course. Like, not a lot of them or anything. The official word from the government is that they were almost completely wiped out by the end of the war and the survivors don't have the numbers or the power to pose a threat anymore. And they had trouble with sunlight even before the war fried the rest of the ozone layer, so it's not likely John will see any of them. Which is probably for the best, and everything, but he's still a little sorry. Real live aliens! Out there somewhere!

Of course one of the genres of terrible-things-about-traveling movies is the one where the travelers get attacked by a stray band of hungry trolls, and almost everyone dies and sometimes there are some really icky sex bits. But that's just the movies! And the characters almost always start shooting right away instead of trying to talk first. In real life John thinks it could actually be pretty sweet.

When he gets bored with the view, he buys a snack out of the vending console on the skiff. It would be nice if there were other passengers, but making a trip this long is pretty rare. Someone else is supposed to come on board when they get to Mile High, but until then it's just John and the pilots, and he really shouldn't be bothering them—they take long shifts, keeping the skiff moving so it's not an easy target, and sleep when they're not actively piloting.

John signs into pesterchum and bothers his friends for a little while, until they get far enough from the dome that he keeps losing his connection. This is going to be _such_ a long trip, with all the time he can't talk to them. Still, at least he has Nic Cage to keep him company! He made sure to load up his laptop with plenty of quality cinema before he left. He gets through _National Treasure_ and the glory that is _Face/Off_ , and puts the computer to sleep when he realizes he's nodding off at the beginning of _Season of the Witch_. Wouldn't want to miss any of the good parts.


	2. Mad Max scenic tour

_He burns my skin  
Never mind about the shape I'm in—  
I'll keep you safe tonight  
Move your body when the sunlight dies  
Everybody hide your body from the scarecrow  
Everybody hide_  
—Abraham Lincoln

Light coming in the window wakes John up early the next morning: there's thick frost spread across the window glass, and the rising sun makes it glitter silvery bright. It's beautiful. John fumbles his glasses on and watches the frost shine until it's completely burned off by the sun. So cool.

Breakfast is another freeze-dried packet punched out of the vending console and a bottle of mineral-enhanced hydrating fluid that tastes like cherry jello. Cherry is one of John's favorite flavors, though, so that's not bad.

What's less cool is that there's still another whole day to go, and then another half day tomorrow, before they get to Heat City. The traveling part is _so boring_. John really hopes the person they pick up this afternoon will be interesting to talk to or know some cool card games or something. No offense to Nic Cage and his magnificent oeuvre! But it really would be nice to have somebody to talk to.

They seem to have come most of the way through the mountains overnight, but the landscape outside is still pretty sharp and craggly right now. It casts sharp shadows that the skiff weaves through, patterns of light and dark, like something out of an old, old movie. Once, John thinks he sees the flash of something small and furry darting for cover, and another time, some loose bits of rock come crumbling down toward them as they pass. It's not quite as flat and empty as the lowlands they passed through at the very start of the trip.

Then the mountains catch their second wind or something, because suddenly they're bigger and sharper and more intimidating. The skiff climbs them and winds along twisty roads and goes right through them in tunnels more than once. There's not much light inside the tunnels but from what little John can see they're _old_ , before-the-war stuff, grimy old tiles with ancient spray paint logos. John's stomach does kind of giddy little flippy things, and he imagines telling Dave about this trip. The Mad Max scenic tour.

As they come out of the third tunnel there's a terrible low rumbling sound, and John thinks, earthquake? for about two seconds before there's a loud, sharp _crash_ and the skiff fishtails, shuddering and swerving to a halt. The lights in the skiff go out. John's heart kicks into high gear.

Then something explodes.

Years of action movie training have taught John to hit the floor and cover his head. The skiff rocks with the force of the explosion. Some kind of alarm starts beeping unhappily, then fizzles and cuts off. In the wake of the explosion there are people shouting, too many voices for it to be just the skiff pilots. They sound angry.

John peeks over the lip of the window and oh _man_ is this not cool. There are like half a dozen guys out there, sunburned brown and wearing rags and _carrying guns_ which is just about the opposite of cool. Totally the opposite.

The guys are shooting at the front of the skiff, and it sounds like there are answering shots coming from up there? Wow, John never realized how much he didn't want to be rooting for anybody in a gun battle until it happened. Gosh, though, he really hopes the skiff pilots win.

One of the guys outside goes flying in a sprawl of messy limbs, gun skittering to the rocks as he falls, and John feels awful about how grateful he is for that. Then there's a scream from the front of the skiff and he forgets feeling awful and goes back to feeling terrified. The guys outside are pretty good at hiding behind things, so it's hard for the skiff pilots—pilot? are they down to just one?—to get clear shots. It looks uncomfortably like they know what they're doing.

At least, it looks like that until the hoverbike shows up. The person on the hoverbike is covered from head to toe against the sun, with this awesome helmet and a jumpsuit that's black striped with blue, and he—or she! it's hard to tell, and John wouldn't want to make assumptions—is carrying an _amazing_ laser rifle. The bike skids to a halt, kicking up dust, and the rider is already lifting the rifle, firing off one shot after another, zap-zap-zap, taking the raiders down.

It looks like as soon as they realize who's attacking them they flee, the survivors scrambling off into the rocks. The biker gets in one more shot that makes one of the raiders stagger, but get up and keep running. Then he-or-she shoulders the gun, gets off the bike, and starts walking toward the skiff. John thinks he should probably head up to the front and...and find out what happened to the pilots, see if he can help, or something. It's not easy, but he should do it.

He hasn't gotten very far when the crashed skiff rocks slightly, and there's a clang of metal from up ahead. The rider must have come on board. And that's awesome, right? John is pretty sure it must be. This is someone who just appeared out of nowhere to save him from raiders, just like something out of a movie. He's going to think really hard about all the ways this is like a _completely rad adventure_ and as little as possible about the ways it could easily be a tragic cautionary tale instead. He takes deep breaths.

When the rider appears in the doorway of the passenger compartment, John does his best to smile confidently. "Hi," he says. The rider looks shorter up close, more like human-sized and less like an amazing larger-than-life hero. The visor of the helmet is pure black, and on the sides it has jagged purple lines for decoration. They could be waves or mountains, John doesn't know.

"A survvivvor, huh." The helmet, cool as it is, garbles the sound of the rider's voice. John almost says so, but the rider is already reaching up to unlatch it under his-or-her chin.

"Oh my god," John says as his totally awesome heroic rescuer takes off that sweet helmet, because this is the part where in the movies it would turn out to be Megan Fox or something. This is not the movies. It is very definitely not Megan Fox. "You're a troll!"

"Yeah, wwell spotted," the troll says, and he speaks totally understandable English but there's something about his voice that makes John desperately wish for a drink of water, even more than being out here in the dry dusty wasteland in the first place. "Wwhat'd those shitpails wwant from you, anywway?"

"I don't know!" John says. "They just came up out of the rocks when we cleared the last tunnel, and bam! Right into us." He's getting the shakes a little now that the shooting and exploding is over. "That was pretty awesome, how you took them out, by the way."

"Yeah," the troll says, nodding like he's so cool he just knows that already. The sort of fin things sticking out of the sides of his neck turn purply, though, which makes it look kind of like he's blushing. "You're just lucky I wwas around."

"I guess I am," John agrees. Then he frowns. "I mean unless you decide you decide you want to enslave me or eat me for dinner or...whatever." There are a lot of _theories_ about what the trolls wanted in the first place when they showed up, but none of them have been conclusively confirmed.

This troll right now is looking at John like _he's_ the alien weirdo. "No," he says. "I don't." The purple fades from his neck-fins and he goes back to being pretty much gray all over, except for his hair, which is black with an actually sort of bitchin' purple streak in the front. It's...kind of cool, really, seeing one up close. Seeing how trolls are built almost the same way as humans but not quite, the way something about their proportions or angles or something just doesn't match up to what John's brain is expecting to see.

"You done starin?" the troll asks. "I mean, I know I'm a sexy piece a wwork, but cod."

John blinks. "Cod?" he repeats, because he's not sure he heard that right.

The troll's shoulders hunch. "I didn't savve your ass so you could gimme carp, domedwweller," he says.

"Sorry," John says, trying his best not to grin. "You know puns kind of make you seem massively less threatening, right?"

"Noww you're just demonstratin your appallin ignorance a troll culture," the troll sniffs.

"Well, you _are_ the first troll I've ever met," John says. "But, uh, sorry. I'll try to be more culturally sensitive!"

The troll gives him another funny look, like that was a weird thing to say—okay, probably it's a funny look! maybe trolls have different body language, and John did just promise to try to be understanding about stuff like that—and then shakes his head. "If those guys wweren't after you in particular, then this wwas a supply raid," he says. Then he turns away and stomps off.

Cultural differences or no, that was pretty rude.


	3. the beginning of a beautiful cross-cultural friendship

_I'm trying not to think about nothin but me  
But I'm caught between the devil and the deep blue sea  
And my brain's in overdrive, I never can tell  
But the fact of the matter is I know quite well  
Livin ain't livin in a small amount  
So take it from me, every little bit counts_  
—Troll Mother Theresa

John catches up to the troll in the cargo bay of the skiff. "Okay!" he says. "I think we got off to a bad start last time. Can we start over? Hi, I'm John. Thanks for saving me from those raiders! What's your name?"

"I—Eridan," the troll says, sounding confused. "Wwhat are you so flippin friendly for?"

"Well jeez, why wouldn't I be?" John asks. "You just saved my life and you're the first troll I've ever met and this is kind of exciting!"

Eridan stares at him again. John decides that must just be a thing trolls do that doesn't mean anything. "Wwe almost wwiped your species out," he says.

"Nah, you didn't come that close," John says. "Don't even worry about it!" He smiles reassuringly and Eridan blinks at him, really slowly. His eyes are a little lighter-colored than the streak in his hair, but totally still purple. It's super cool. "So, hey, what are you doing back here?"

"Wwhat does it look like?" Eridan asks. "I'm lookin for anyfin useful you might a been carryin."

John puts his hands on his hips, frowning. "So you're a raider, too," he says. "Would you have attacked us if those guys hadn't beaten you to it?"

Eridan's fins flutter a little. "I'm fuckin flattered you seem to think me an the Crosshairs could take a boat this size," he says, and really John hadn't meant that to be flattering at all, "but I wwasn't lookin to land a catch like this." He tears a long thin line through some shipping plastic with one claw and peels it open to look at the contents. "Shit, you got a whole case a bitterbeans in here," he says. "Sol's gonna flip wwhen I tell him I got these."

"Bitter—you mean _coffee_ ," John says.

"Wwhatevver," Eridan says, shrugging. "The important thing is, Sol wwants them and noww I can not givve him any."

"That doesn't sound very friendly," John says. Not that he has a whole lot of place to tell trolls how to make friends, or anything! But it's true.

Eridan makes a face like he just stepped in dog doo. "Wwe're not _friends_ ," he says. "Wwe're kismeses. Or wwe wwould be if Sol'd get his head out a his nook an act like it."

There are a couple of words there that John thinks he might need definitions for, even if he's pretty sure from context that at least one of them is rude. But he's not going to let himself get distracted! You have to keep a cool head in the crisis, or else you wind up being the character whose death inspires the other ones to pull through in the second half. Which is valiant and all, but not really the role he wants to play if he can help it!

"So you weren't here to attack the skiff, I believe that," he says. "But you _are_ stealing the cargo."

"Cod, givve me a break here," Eridan says. "If I don't pick up this haul, some scavvenger wwill. Maybe in your bubble cities evveryfin's nice an easy, but out here if you wwanna get by you take wwhatevver you can get. You fuckin wwuss out about takin somefin evvery time someone else might wwant it too, you die a starvvation alone in a ditch." His shoulders slump and his expression turns from defensive to pleading, his fins fluttering a little. "You gotta understand, right, wwe ain't got much. There's like six a us in the hivve I livve in an wwe're barely scratchin by."

Gosh. "Sorry," John says. One thing that the movies have _never_ prepared him for was the idea of a troll looking sad and hopeless and needy. "I'm being an insensitive jerk, huh? You're just trying to take care of your family."

Eridan looks uncomfortable. "Wwell, I mean, I don't havve a family, exactly," he says. "But I'm tryin to do my part for the team, I guess."

John's brain summarizes: _You have been rescued by a heroic, lonely outlaw with a tragic past. His life is hard, but he wants to do right by people, even though the deck is totally stacked against him. He tries to be brave, but underneath that, he's vulnerable._ He has, in fact, seen this movie. Just not with a troll in it.

"Wow, Eridan, I'm really sorry," John says, reaching out without really thinking about it. "I really have been an insensitive jerk, huh? I made a lot of stupid assumptions when I don't really know you at all."

Then he immediately has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, because Eridan gapes at him like a cartoon fish. "I nevver wwould a expected—I mean," Eridan says, shrugging—which John takes as a hint that he should get his hand off Eridan's arm—and going purple around the fins again. "You're not bad, for a human."

"Hehe, thanks," John says. "You're pretty nice for a troll."

Eridan goes purple across his cheeks, too, which makes John even more sure that he _is_ blushing. "Yeah wwell. Don't let it go to your head or nofin."

 _Such_ a heart of gold. "Haha, sorry, I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable," John says. "Um. You want some help looking through the cargo? I could help you, if you tell me what kind of stuff you need most."

"I wwon't stop you if you wwanna," Eridan says. He sort of acts like he wants John to think it's no big deal, but John has practice with Dave's poker face, and he's not fooled even a little bit. "Wwe alwways need medical supplies an mechanical shit." He waves a hand. "Wwater purifyin tabs, spare parts, components, lubricatin oil, shit like that."

"Okay," John says. He frowns. "Not food?"

"Not unless I got room left after wwe clear out the other stuff," Eridan says. "Wwe got a couple pretty good hunters."

That makes sense, even if it's kind of a horrible thought, living on the mutated things you can catch out in the wasteland. John gets to work, helping Eridan sort through the contents of the cargo bay, picking out the most useful things and piling them up to be packed onto the back of Eridan's hoverbike. It's sort of nice to feel like he has something practical to do—it keeps John from getting too freaked out, gives him something keep busy with.

Eventually Eridan says, "So are other humans like you?"

"Um," John says. "More or less! I mean, I don't think I'm all that unusual."

"So it's normal for humans to just...take pity on strangers?" Eridan asks.

"Sure!" John says. "I mean, I guess not everybody would, but I like to think most humans would be that decent." Then he realizes why Eridan was probably asking, and does a kind of mental facepalm. "Oh augh, sorry. That was probably really rude of me, huh? To start acting like I pitied you when we just met, and after you rescued me, and—"

"No, it's okay!" Eridan croaks. "Don't be sorry for that. Please. As a personal favvor."

John has the distinct feeling he's missing something. But hey! At least this time he apparently didn't do something horrible and offensive by accident. "Okay!" he says. "As long as you're not upset."

Eridan shakes his head, and gives John this smile that would be really sweet-looking if his teeth weren't so sharky. "I ain't upset at all."

Gosh, look at that! They're taking the first steps toward cross-cultural understanding. John beams at him until he gets sort of embarrassed-looking and turns away.

They go back to sorting cargo for a few more minutes, and then Eridan makes a wet gargly throat-clearing sound. "So, uh, wwhat d'you plan on doin noww that your ride's shot?"

John fidgets. "I guess I don't really have a plan," he admits. He chews on his lip. "Okay. Uh. Staying here sounds bad, since once you and your awesome gun leave other dangerous things could show up, right?" He's mostly talking to himself, but Eridan nods. "So I guess I'll just have to pack up some supplies and get moving myself. How far is the nearest dome from here, anyway?"

"Wwhat, you think you'll just wwalk?" Eridan says incredulously. "You'd nevver make it, look at you! You evver been out here at all before?"

"Well, no," John says. "But I'm tougher than I look! And you said it yourself, getting by in the wasteland means taking what you can, right?"

"Yeah, but that ain't the same thing as gettin yourself killed on account a you take stupid chances," Eridan says. He holds up a hand to stop John's next argument, even though John isn't really sure yet what it would be. "You're right, you stay here you'll just get mauled by scavvengers a some kind, but if you wwander out into the dry by yourself, same thing. So that leavves just one good option, right?"

"...It does?" John says.

Eridan looks really pleased with himself. "You come home wwith me," he says.

It's John's turn to do the cartoon-fish thing, opening his mouth and then closing it again when he has no idea what to say. "I'm...not so sure that's a good idea," he tries eventually. "I mean, I'm really grateful for the offer! It's just that I have somebody expecting me, you know, and I'm sure people will come looking for the skiff once it doesn't show up to Mile High. I mean, maybe I could stay here and wait for the search party! Maybe they'd get here before anything terrible happened...."

From the look on Eridan's face, he doesn't like the odds. "I think you're underestimatin how hungry everyfin out here is," he says. "First your skiff has to not show up, then your guys gotta put a rescue team together, then they gotta spread out and start searchin." He ticks off steps on clawed fingers as he talks. "That whole time, you gotta dodge ferals an cholerbears an swarms a those little flyin things with the horns."

"Okay, it's true, that doesn't sound like a good time," John admits. "But still! I can't just go run away and live with trolls, or something. I'd miss my Dad. I'd miss my friends."

"That's human stuff, huh," Eridan says. "Wwell, I mean, you don't havve to stay forevver, right? But you could come along for now, get outta trouble?"

This seems to really matter to him a lot. John chews on his lip. "I guess I could, yeah," he says. "But you have to promise you'll help me get to the next dome, okay? Even if that's just pointing me in the right direction when I'm ready to go."

For a second it looks like Eridan is still going to argue, but then his fins flutter and he nods. "Okay, wwe can do it like that," he says. He picks up a box of water purification tablets. "Let's get this stuff shifted, first off."


End file.
